Labor rights
What Trump wants: It’s hard to be sure. On the federal minimum wage alone, he opposed raising it from the current $7.50 an hour, called for boosting it to $10, and suggested dropping it altogether and letting each state set its own mark. Pick one. But Trump has played hardball with labor at some of his hotels, has been quick to pick fights with union leaders and said he might be willing to roll back an Obama administration rule allowing low-paid managers to collect overtime. His proposed labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, is CEO of a fast-food giant opposed to minimum wage boosts, and Trump gets two appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, which will give it a GOP majority.
What California has: A law Gov. Jerry Brown signed last year boosted the minimum wage for larger businesses to $10.50 this year and, in stages, to $15 by 2022. Most public school teachers and government workers are unionized.
What could happen: Trump can’t overturn California’s minimum wage, but that doesn’t mean federal rules won’t have an effect, said Raymond Hogler, a professor of management at Colorado State University. A lower federal minimum wage “causes ripples in the economy, with maybe some employers looking to move to lower-wage states,” where the federal minimum is law, he said. And while California, with its labor-friendly Legislature, isn’t going to enact an antiunion right-to-work law as an increasing number of states are doing, “a national right-to-work bill gets introduced in Congress every year,” Hogler said. “One of these days there’s going to be enough support to pass it, and with Republicans in charge, maybe it’s this year.”